India will be part of Amazon's 3rd annual Prime day

Amazon said that there will be "hundreds of thousands of deals" exclusively for Prime members around the world with new deals coming as often as five minutesVikas SN | ETtech | Updated: June 29, 2017, 16:38 IST

India will be part of Amazon's third annual Prime day that will be held on July 11 across the world.

Amazon said that there will be "hundreds of thousands of deals" exclusively for Prime members around the world with new deals coming as often as five minutes. This year, the sale will be for 30 hours starting 6pm on July 10.

Apart from India, Amazon has also expanded Prime Day to China and Mexico, thereby bringing the total number of countries conducting the deals event to 13. This includes United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, Belgium and Austria.

“Our members love Prime Day and we have been thrilled by the response over the last two years. It is inspiring us to make it even better this year for Prime members,” said Greg Greeley, Vice President, Amazon Prime. “Every part of our business is working to deliver more deals for a record number of shoppers. This year’s Prime Day is too big for 24 hours – so we’re giving Prime members 30 hours to shop”

This year, the deals will be organized across more than 20 of the most-shopped-for themes right from pet lovers to gardeners and techies to artists, with nearly 40% of the lightning deals coming from small businesses and entrepreneurs. The e-commerce giant will also allow Prime members to preview and track deals with deal alerts.

Apart from this, Prime members will get exclusive sneak preview of The Grand Tour season 2 launching later this year. The company said it will also release one exclusive Prime Video title every day from July 5 - July 11 in India.

“A large part of our growth, when we look at Q1 when we were still growing at 85% year-on-year (in units), is because Prime members shop more and new customers come at a very rapid pace." Amazon India head Amit Agarwal had told ET in an interview earlier this month.

While Amazon doesn't disclose its Prime membership numbers, the company claims to have tripled its membership from January 2017 to June 2017. It also claims to have increased the number of products under Prime by 70% to 2 million since the launch of the programme in July last year.

The company is now ramping up its Prime offerings in India by offering benefits such as event ticketing and cashbacks through the Amazon Pay wallet, ET reported on Tuesday. The company is also in discussions to launch special previews for Prime members providing them limited tickets for third-party events.